


better, i think

by thewayaround



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Bill Denbrough Loves Mike Hanlon, Character Study, Everyone Loves Mike Hanlon, F/M, Florida, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Implies/Referenced Injuries, M/M, Mentions of Suicide Attempts, Mike Hanlon Deserves Nice Things, Mike Hanlon Loves Bill Denbrough, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Stanley Uris is a Good Friend, Summer Vacation, honestly mike deserves the world, this is honestly just a happy fic about mike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26050327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewayaround/pseuds/thewayaround
Summary: Stan is on his right, one of his legs pulled up in his chair as he rests his head against Mike’s shoulder, fingers flying across his phone as he texts his wife.He thinks about Florida as he watches Stan’s fingers type out,I love you.”Hey, Stan?” he asks as soon as the other man’s phone is locked on his lap. Stan makes a humming noise against his shoulder. “Have you ever been to Florida.””A few times, on vacation,” Stan replies. “Why?”Mike thinks for a moment, trying to find the words he wants to say. “Do you… do you think I would like it?”Stan doesn’t say anything for a moment, then Mike feels him shift to sit up and turns to look at him. Stan stares back, a soft look on his face.After a few seconds, he nods. “Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I think you would.”
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Mike Hanlon & Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon & The Losers Club, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	better, i think

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like twenty minutes
> 
> It's just a character study, really. Mike Hanlon deserves the universe.

He wanted to go to Florida.

They were in the waiting room in the Bangor emergency room, all clean from the staff showers and dressed in extra scrubs from the nurses when he remembered saying it that summer.

_”When I graduate, I’m going to Florida.”_

_”What’s in Florida, Mike?”_

_”I don’t know. You know, I guess it’s just a place I always wanted to go.”_

_”Stan, you should go with Mike to Florida. You already act eighty. You’d clean up with all the grandmas.”_

He looks across the waiting room where Richie is stretched out on the floor, his head in Bev’s lap as he sleeps restlessly. She has one hand in his hair, running her fingers through it whenever he twitches awake to pull him back under. She’s propped against Ben’s calves where he sits in the chair behind her, her head back on his knees as they speak softly.

Bill had disappeared twenty minutes earlier with the excuse of going to the cafeteria for coffee, but Mike has a sneaking suspicion that he’s crying in the bathroom down the hall. His eyes had been filled with tears they all pretended not to notice when he left the room.

Stan is on his right, one of his legs pulled up in his chair as he rests his head against Mike’s shoulder, fingers flying across his phone as he texts his wife. He had called her as soon as they brought Eddie to the OR, and she immediately headed to the Atlanta airport to find a flight.

He thinks about Florida as he watches Stan’s fingers type out, _I love you_.

”Hey, Stan?” he asks as soon as the other man’s phone is locked on his lap. Stan makes a humming noise against his shoulder. “Have you ever been to Florida.”

”A few times, on vacation,” Stan replies. “Why?”

Mike thinks for a moment, trying to find the words he wants to say. “Do you… do you think I would like it?”

Stan doesn’t say anything for a moment, then Mike feels him shift to sit up and turns to look at him. Stan stares back, a soft look on his face.

After a few seconds, he nods. “Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I think you would.”

”Can you tell me about it?” Mike asks him, and he winces when the words come out shy. Everything he knew about Florida had been from books, or articles on the internet whenever he recalled his childhood and remembered. He was always scared if he looked too long, he would convince himself to leave. To leave Derry and forget. His silly childhood dream wasn’t something he could afford to want, not with everything looming so closely in the distance.

”I think Patty has some pictures on Facebook,” Stan tells him softly, reaching for his phone.

Mike watches him open Facebook and pull up Patty’s account. It’s the first time Mike has seen her face. Stan had showed them a photo at the Jade of Orient, and Mike had turned away. If anything bad had happened, he didn’t want to see her face.

She’s a pretty, mousy woman with short blonde hair and an angled nose. Thin, black glasses are perched on the bridge, and there’s a bright smile on her face. He can see Stan in the background, a scowl on his face where he’s talking on the phone; he’s got one hand thrown up beside his face. Mike is suddenly aware that Patty is laughing at him in the photo.

”Patty’s really pretty,” Mike tells him, and Stan snorts.

”I knew I saw you look away when I showed everyone her photo,” he chuckles, opening her photos. Mike sees him flick to her albums, watches him select one titled _Florida 2014_. 

”We went to Panama City,” Stan tells him, passing Mike his phone. “The water there is gorgeous; you can actually see your feet, unlike the Atlantic. Patty’s parents left her their summer home after they passed, so we normally head down for a week then rent it out during the summer.”

The first photo is one of Stan. He’s laying on an oversized beach towel covered in ice pops, a large pair on sunglasses on his face. His hair is wet and slicked back, and Mike can see the dark scars that litter the sides of his face, illuminated by the sun.

The second photo is one of Patty and Stan in the water, Patty hanging to his back and smiling brightly at whoever’s taking the photo. Stan is pressing a kiss to her cheek.

”There were so many people on the beach we had to get there at eight in the morning to find a good spot,” Stan tells him as Mike flicks through each photo. “We brought a picnic for lunch and split a bottle of wine the first day we were there. We had to sit away from the lifeguard – glass isn’t allowed on the beach – and we stayed until dinner.”

There’s a picture of the two of them, a selfie. They’re on a boardwalk – Mike can see the rail behind them – and the ocean spans out so far behind them it seems unending.

”You can get ice cream on that boardwalk,” Stan tells him, swiping for him. It’s a video, and he clicks play.

”Patty, what the hell!?” Video Stan is shouting, bent over the ocean with his feet in the water and dragging napkins down his face. Patty is cackling behind the camera, and Mike watches in amusement as she lifts a crushed ice cream cone into the frame. “This isn’t funny!” Video Stan shouts, lifting his head to look at her. There’s vanilla ice cream in his hair and dripping down his nose and cheeks. “You got it down my shirt!”

”I love you!” Patty calls, and then screams when Stan turns on her.

Mike watches the video shake. He hears water splashing and the two of them laughing. Patty shouts, “Stan, no!” and then Mike hears what sounds like the rest of the ice cream cone being crushed. The video shakes a little more, and then Patty is filling the frame, a frown on her face with crumbs and vanilla in her hair.

”I hate you,” she says, and Video Stan laughs, “You just told me otherwise.”

The video stops, and Mike looks up to see Stan smiling down at his phone.

”You really love her,” he says, and Stan nods.

”She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

They finish out the album together, laughing and smiling. Occasionally, Stan will describe where the photo was taken, or he’ll say, “You’d love that place,” and Mike just basks in the beauty of it all. Of the photos, of the love between Stan and his wife, of having Stan beside him again. They had always been close. There wasn’t much love for either of them in Derry. The black boy with the dead parents and the Jew with the frisbee hat and big nose. It had been an awful place to grow up, surrounded by that much hatred.

”I’m sorry,” Mike says as he passes Stan his phone. 

”What for?” Stan asks, and Mike shrugs.

”Making you all come back,” he answers, looking to his hands. There’s dirt under his nails, and he picks at it. “It… it was selfish of me to think you all would. We made that promise twenty-seven years ago. I would have understood if none of you came.”

Stan’s quiet for a moment. “I almost killed myself.”

Mike’s heart stutters and skips several beats, knocking the wind from his lungs.

”You called, and I remembered It, and I was so fucking scared,” Stan continues. “I didn’t want to come back. I was scared if I did, we would all die. That we wouldn’t stand a chance against It if we were all together.” He pauses, and Mike watches him rub at his eyes in his peripheral. “Patty found the notes I wrote to all of you in the office, after I locked myself in the bathroom to do it. She used the key to unlock the door and stopped me.”

He takes in a shaky breath. “I was going to slit my wrists, Mike. She came in and scared me so bad I dropped the blades I had just gotten out of my razor. I watched her pick them up and flush them down the toilet. She was yelling, and I was crying, and then she was crying and climbing into the bathtub with me still completely dressed.”

Mike doesn’t look away from his hands. He just stares at the dirt under his nails as tears well in his eyes. “Why did you come?” he manages to ask after a few moments, his voice thick with unshed tears. He wasn’t going to cry; he had to be strong, he had to keep the tears in.

Stan reaches out to take one of his hands. “Patty thought I should,” he replies softly, squeezing Mike’s fingers. Across the room, Richie startles awake, then buries his face in Bev’s thigh as she pulls her fingers across his scalp. “I told her, about It. She believed me. At least, I think she did. She told me I needed to uphold the promise I made to you guys, but that I also needed to promise to come back to her.”

Mike chokes out a noise, and Stan leans over to bury his nose in Mike’s hair. “I’m really happy you’re here, Stan,” he chokes out, and the tears won’t stay in anymore.

Stan lets go of his hand to wrap his arms around Mike’s shoulders, and Mike lets himself be manhandled into Stan’s chest. The scrubs smell like generic laundry detergent and sterilizing agents, and Mike breathes in until his lightheaded.

”We should go to Florida,” Stan tells him, and Mike laughs wetly into his chest. “You, me, Patty. Maybe the others. We should all just go there, take sabbaticals from work and live in the summer house for two months.”

Mike chuckles, pulling back to wipe at his eyes. There’s a wet spot on Stan’s scrub shirt. “I’d like that,” Mike tells him, and Stan smiles, linking their fingers together in his lap.

They’re quiet for a long time after that. Bill still hasn’t come back, and Ben has fallen asleep in his chair, his head propped in his hand. Bev has slouched over and passed out on Richie’s shoulder, and the angle looks like it’s killing her back.

At some point, Mike drifts off with his head tucked into the juncture between Stan’s head and neck.

He dreams of bright sunsets over blue waves, dripping ice cream cones, and ice pop patterned beach towels.

* * *

The sand is warm under his thighs.

The sun heats his exposed skin pleasantly. He’ll have to get into the water eventually, just to cool off, but right now he’s content to sit in the sand.

Bev waves to him as she leaves the water to head to him, pausing to kick a soccer ball back to a group of kids a few tents over. Over her shoulder, Mike watches Eddie shove Richie into the waves, then Ben. The two of them come up sputtering for air, and Eddie just laughs until they’re both on him, taking him under with him.

”How you doing, Honey?” she asks, collapsing onto the towel Bill left vacant beside him, reaching for the glass of lemonade in her chair’s cupholder.

Mike looks down the beach, at all the people there. Hotels and condos and private houses line the barrier of the sand. Miles from the shore, a cruise liner is passing by, just a dot on the horizon.

”I’m good,” Mike tells her. “It’s great. I’m glad we did this.”

Bev smiles, leaning into his side to press a kiss to his cheek, then staying there, their heads pressed together. “You deserve it,” she tells him, and he smiles.

”Trying to steal my man, Bev?” Bill’s voice comes from behind them. They both turn to look at him. He holds a paper tray of shaved ice cups in one hand, bright multicolored spoons sticking up from each one of them. Behind him, Stan and Patty walk hand in hand, a similar tray in Stan’s fingers. “You have one of your own, go find him.”

”He’s currently being drowned by Eddie and Richie,” Bev says, gesturing to the water. “Mike’s my backup, sorry Bill.”

Bill snorts, falling onto the opposite end of Mike’s towel. “Hi,” he smiles, leaning in to press a quick kiss to Mike’s lips. Mike smiles into it, digging his fingers into the sand.

”Ew, cooties!” Richie’s voice screams from the water, followed by a panicked shout as Eddie jumps onto his back and forces him under the waves.

”He says as if we aren’t sharing a wall with him and Eddie,” Patty shudders, sitting in her chair. Stan leans down to kiss her, then hands her one of the cups from the tray in his hand.

Ben shakes water from his hair as he comes to them, smiling at Bev and sitting between her thighs on Bill’s towel, graciously taking the two cups Bill passes them.

Mike smiles as he takes his own cup, leaning into Bill’s side once the tray is empty and discarded in the sand.

Richie and Eddie shove at each other on their race to the tent. The scar on Eddie’s side is bright white and spiderwebbed, and Mike vividly remembers Stan charging across the cave to tackle him and Richie out of the claws path when he sees it.

Eddie had fallen just out if the direct path. Instead of going through his chest like they all thought it would, It’s claw had struck him just on his side. His ribs, hip, and femur had all been shattered. The doctor told him the blood had been stopped just in time to save his leg.

”I hope you got me cherry like I asked, Stanley,” he says, reaching to take the cup Stan holds out to him.

”I hope you didn’t,” Richie choruses, reaching for the last cup. “I don’t want to kiss him if he tastes like cough syrup.”

”Fuck you, Rich,” Eddie spits, shoving the spoon in his mouth. Richie leans over to kiss his temple before sitting on the towel behind Bev, propping himself up on her back. Mike watches Eddie sit in his lawn chair and hook their ankles together.

The sun is warm on his skin, but the foam cup is cold between his fingers. Bill presses a kiss to the top of his head. He feels Stan’s foot press into the small of his back, and he turns to look at him.

”So, Florida,” he says, scooping blue ice out of his cup and putting it in his mouth. “Is it everything you ever dreamed?”

Next to him, Ben knocks their ankles together and smiles brightly at him, slouching further into Bev’s chest. She kisses the back of his head before leaning against Richie.

”It’s better, I think,” Mike tells him. “You’re all here with me.”

Stan smiles, presses his toes a little harder into Mike’s back.

There’s a new album on Patty’s Facebook that night. _Florida 2017_ , filled to the brim with new pictures of the eight of them, the sunset, and Mike, laid out in the sun with large sunglasses on his face and a cup of yellow, half-melted shaved ice on his stomach.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: [sncrlynwtms](sncrlynwtms.tumblt.com)


End file.
